Mr. Decal's Blog

The term decal is the abbreviated form of the word decalcomania. The invention of taking artist rendering from canvas and printing these images onto a medium to decorate ceramic pieces attributed to Simon Francois Ravenet. Simon was from France, he was an engraver who immigrated to England, and after arriving in England circa 1750, he perfected this transfer process he called decalcomania.

In the 1950’s plastic substrates such as vinyl, Mylar’s, polyesters, Lexan, were coated with an adhesive and the pressure sensitive decal was invented. The white and yellow tinted vinyl is used to print decals using the screen printing process. To learn more about screen-printing read my post at http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2009/12/  What are water slide-off decals?

There are two types of decals known in the screen-printing industry jargon as face-up and facedown decals. The facedown decals are printed on a clear substrate, such as clear Mylar or clear polyester. Polyester is the generic name of the brand name Mylar.

Clear polyester is manufactured also with a white adhesive, and is metalized to create silver and brushed polyester also known as chrome or brushed silver polyester. Clear polyester can also be metalized using a matte silver finishes and can be metalized to gold shinny surface or a gold-brushed finish. The history of metalized polyester I will discuss in another article.

Now back to the facedown decal, which is printed, on clear polyester with the graphics printed in reverse. Example of this if a decal design calls to print red, yellow and white the face-up decal would print the yellow and the red the white provided by the white vinyl. The facedown decal printed on clear polyester the yellow, red and white would be printed to create a white background for the other colors. Sometimes white is not used in the design of a facedown decal, and some facedown decals use white but only to outline the copy of the design thereby leaving the background of the decal clear.

When viewing the face-up decal the image is a positive image, the facedown decal is a reverse image only be rightly be viewed through the outside of a window. Because the facedown decal mounted on the inside of a window, this type of decal design is not very popular. Since most windows of cars, storefronts, or homes are highly tinted, the tinting mutes the facedown decal message, and therefore the intended message is not be seen easily.  

The facedown decal is widely used when printing static cling decals. Almost every static cling decal printed on clear static cling to be mounted on the inside of windows because on retail store window the decal mounted on the outside can be removed by anyone. The static cling mounted on the outside of a moving vehicle will blow off because of the wind created. Therefore, the facedown static decal is used to mount on the inside of the window.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

Static Cling Decals ~ Ultra Removable Decals

There are many different types of materials that can be printed on to manufacturer a decal or a label. The environment the decal or label will be subject to guides the choice of a particular substrate. If the reader needs to know what the terms decal and label means read my previous post at; http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2009/09/ titled: Decals and Labels, what is the difference?   

The static cling material clings to windows, glass, or any high polished surface because of the static charge the material naturally possesses. Before static cling materials, where used as a decal or label the static electrical charge of the vinyl was a problem.

 Screen printers that print onto the adhesive backed vinyl their number one dilemma was the static electric charge inherent in the vinyl. The static charge would cause the vinyl material to adhere to each other making it difficult to separate the sheets. Many products invented to address this problem, some by research teams, and some by the companies press operators.   

Then a material manufacturer or a printer that is not truly clear who invented the idea of using this product’s static properties as a benefit. It is clear some individual notice that a highly polymer vinyl would adhere to glass and highly polished surfaces. The static cling decal and label substrate was introduced to the printing manufacturers’ as a new substrate, without adhesive.

This was a product with a viable future, because there are many situations that a static cling decal or label would be necessary. The one industry that easily accepted this new product was sunglass and reading glasses manufacturers.

Before the invention of static cling substrates, this industry used adhesive labels to identify the different types of lens offered. If you remember purchasing sunglasses in the 1960’s- the early 1970’s you will recall trying to remove the label affixed to the lens of the eyewear. You will also recall trying to remove the adhesive once the label was removed, and if done incorrectly scratching the lens in the process. This was very frustrating to you as the consumer and was equally frustrating to the sunglass manufacturer.  

The use of promotional decals by companies now had an additional alternative to offer their customers who affixed promotional decals on their vehicles. Many consumers liked the idea of promoting their product purchases, but did not want to affix an adhesive decal to their vehicle.

Static materials now used on retail storefront advertising product specials and in many different venues used for temporary messages. There are two types of static cling material white and clear. The clear material is used for inside the window mounting of the decal and the white material is used to mounted the decal on the outside of the window or on the outside of a product like sunglasses.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

The term decal is the abbreviated form of the word decalcomania. The invention of taking artist rendering from canvas and printing these images onto a medium to decorate ceramic pieces attributed to Simon Francois Ravenet. Simon was from France, he was an engraver who immigrated to England, and after arriving in England circa 1750, he perfected this transfer process he called decalcomania.

In the 1950’s plastic substrates such as vinyl, Mylar’s, polyesters, Lexan, were coated with an adhesive and the pressure sensitive decal was invented. The white and yellow tinted vinyl is used to print decals using the screen printing process. To learn more about screen-printing read my post at http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2009/12/  What are water slide-off decals?

There are two types of decals known in the screen-printing industry jargon as face-up and facedown decals. The facedown decals I will explain in another article. The face-up decal refers to a decal that is printed on top of a semi-opaque substrate with adhesive on the underside of the film.

The face-up decal can only be affixed to the outside of windows, doors, lockers, toolboxes, notebooks, or any other surface. The benefit of using vinyl as the medium to print your decal on; the white vinyl saves money because the printer does not have to print white; because they use the color of the vinyl is white.

Why is this important? Because 90% of all decals have white in the design, so using white vinyl reduces the number of colors to be printed. The second most common background color used for decals is yellow. When a decal has a yellow background using a yellow vinyl will save money because the printer does not have to print yellow and white is not a part of the decals design.

Many of you do know that there are many other colors of vinyl, blue, green, red, gold, silver, etc, etc. Most screen-printers do not print decals using these other colors, because the printer would have to back all the printing in white, thereby costing more to print the decal. Most of these other vinyl colors are used to create thermal die cut decals; to learn more about these types of decals read my post on, “What are Thermal Die Cut Decals” http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2009/10/ .

Printing spot colors on white and yellow vinyl’s works very well except when printing of a blue on a yellow vinyl will produce a green color not the blue that was designed. When the screen-printer prints a CMYK design, the only color vinyl they can use is white vinyl. Printing CMYK on a yellow vinyl is not advisable because the yellow background will defeat the CMYK effect. For more information on spot and CMYK printing see my article titled” C.M.Y.K. or Spot Colors in Printing” http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2010/02/ .

Clear Mylar or clear and white polyesters could be used to print face-up decals, but on the clear substrates, the printer would have to print white. The white polyesters could be used, but is not used very often because the cost of the substrate is higher than white vinyl. White polyesters are used in environment needs the substrates heat resistant properties.

The face-up decal is the most widely used decal construction by far; the distant second is the facedown decal. The reason for using the facedown decal is another article.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

Decals manufactured using various types of materials and each material has unique properties that make the material the right choice for a particular application.

Lexan a brand of hard, practically unbreakable polycarbonate resin, used for shatterproof windows and the like.  Lexan is the brand name of this plastic resin, the generic term is polycarbonate. Polycarbonate used in many industries e.g. windows, but most notability the material is used as bullet resistant shields.

The Lexan material used by banks and convenience store establishments in high crime neighborhoods is the same material utilized by decal manufactures. The bullet resistant shield varieties of Lexan are up to three inches thick. The material properties that allow polycarbonate to stop bullets makes the 5, 10, 15 millimeters thick film a very tuff decal.

The polycarbonate film used by the printing manufacturers to produce decals usually does not come with adhesive. The adhesive applied to the film after the Lexan is printed. The most common polycarbonate known as suede or velvety texture, surface that causes the film not be optically clear. There is also an optically clear version, which is not used very often, in the printing industry, because polycarbonate scratches easily, therefore the suede surface hides any scratches.   

Polycarbonate printing grade films are usually printed using the screen print type of printing. This product can also be printed using other printing methods, when the product is treated to receive the different types of inks that the other printing methods employ.

The screen printing company prints the desired logo, graphic, or other images on the Lexan’s side that does not have the rough texture. When the printing is completed, the manufacture then laminates an adhesive over the printed image thereby sandwiching the printing between the polycarbonate film and the adhesive.  

The adhesive the manufacturer laminates onto the Lexan film known as transfer adhesive. Transfer adhesives come in many different varieties each variety produced with specific application conditions considered. The most widely used transfer adhesive products laminated to the Lexan by the printing manufacturers. These transfer adhesives known by the part numbers 468 and 467 and are manufactured by 3M.

When the polycarbonate decal is mounted to its intended surface the decals image is safely under the Lexan film out of reach of any abrasive forces. This decal once pressed into service will last for years if not decades. This construction allows these types of decals to be used in extreme conditions such as, hot and cold weather, or in abrasive conditions of heavy machinery and on the oily dirty conditions of a factory floor.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

Using decals to build brand awareness is great way to stretch your marketing dollars. The decal once affixed to a conspicuous medium will remind the consumers at large of your brand. In many articles, I have detailed numerous case histories of the effectiveness of decals to build brand awareness years after broadcast, and print media presentations are forgotten.

Decals also employed to drive sales of accessories of a main product line, or product lines that dove tail with your products. We will deal with these two issues one at a time.

First, the idea of using a decal that the retailer distributed to your customer at the time of sale as an additional sales tool to sell other items you sell. Many manufactures have additional products for sales that complement the prime product that sold as an accessory.

To describe how this idea of selling other products with a decal let us consider a not so fictional situation. The fictional part of this example is the company name we will call Heavenly Skis. Heavenly Skis Company manufactures skis and snowboards and sells these products in retail ski outlets nationwide. This winter sports equipment manufacture also sells as accessories clothing, gloves, goggles and crazy designed headwear.

The scenario of a retail sale at a retail outlet of a customer purchasing skis manufactured by Heavenly Skis Company, after the customer pays for the skis, the retailer hands his customer an imprinted decal with the manufacturer’s logo. The customer leaves and immediately affixes the decal to the rear window of the car proud to announce to the world of his/her intelligent purchase. The decal now used by the customer to recommend the purchasing of Heavenly Skis and building brand awareness.

The marketing team at Heavenly Skis is not willing to be as pedestrian as other marketing teams, but work outside the advertising box. This team knows that decals do build brand awareness, but this marketing team knows that this decal can be a vehicle to sell more of their products.

The marketing team works out a viable coupon plan with their retailers using the decal. The plan works like this. Each decal has on the liner a coupon printed on the liner of the decal offering a discount for other items purchased at this retail store. The coupon allows the customer to purchase one of those radical looking ski or snowboarding hats at a discount. The existence of the coupon communicated by the retailer or by signs or banners in the store. The marketing team knows that if 30% of consumers purchase because of the coupon included on the liner of the decal, Heavenly Skis has just increased sales by 30%. Everyone is happy the customer because of the savings, the retail because of the sale of more merchandise, and Heavenly Skis, because of an accessory product sale is always at a higher margin.

The second possibility of using decals to sell products that dove tail with your product. Our same company Heavenly Skis manufactures winter sports equipment, and wants to use decals as building brand awareness, but has a small advertising budget and cannot afford additional cost. Heavenly Skis has a good relationship with Warm and Comfy that manufacturer a winter product known as Warm and Comfy hand warmer and foot warmers. These products placed in the gloves or boots of the skier or snowboarder to keep their hands and feet warm. The Warm and Comfy marketing team advertising budget is robust, so when the marketing team of Heavenly Skis introduces a marketing idea to benefit both companies.

The plan it to print decals with the Heavenly Skis logo imprinted on the decal and on the liner of the decal a coupon is printed to purchase Warm and Comfy products at a discount. The marketing plan works like this Warm and Comfy pays for most of the printing cost for the decal; Heavenly Skis pays for a smaller share of the cost. The Marketing team at Warm and Comfy envisions that this coupon plan can increase their sales by 30% and jumps at the chance to tag along on a main line product. The reason the marketing team of Warm and Comfy is willing to collaborate with Heavenly Skis is that their product is an impulse purchase, and buying skis is not. This coupon will remind the customer they also need Warm and Comfy product, making an impulse product into a must have product.

Does anyone see the value of thinking outside of the marketing box? The problem with most marketing teams is they know too, much. If the marketing team knows, too much they never consider radical new ways to market and advertise their products, or services.

I just have outlined two ways to employ an advertising tool in not so new, but be it very radical way. Is anyone listening? We must envision new ways to make that what we think is impossible, possible.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

Destructible And Tamper Evident Decals

Decals, are manufactured with many different materials, each material group is used for specific uses. Materials like white vinyl are used for decals that mount onto outside windows, doors, lockers, notebooks, vehicles. Clear polyester or clear Mylar is utilized to manufacture decals to be mounted on the inside of windows so the graphic message is seen from the outside. Other materials such as, static cling, Lexan, VTP, white Mylar’s, premium vinyl’s, each used to answer a specific need.

Materials are not the only choice, but there are many different types of adhesives, which are used to fill a particular need. The material set known as destructible vinyls also invented to meet a certain need in the market place.     

Destructible vinyl is a vinyl that has low shear strength, meaning the tensile strength of the material is fragile. The amount of shear force e.g. the force exerted on the material when a person tries to remove a decal or label that is affixed to a surface. The shear force to remove the affixed decal or label is greater than the tensile strength of the substrate therefore the substrate breaks.  

Many new materials used to manufacture decals and labels are substrates that had peculiar problems such as a vinyl with a fragile surface tension. When combined with a very strong adhesive when the decal or label is adhered to a surface, after a 24-hour curing time, the adhesive shear strength is higher than the tensile strength of the vinyl substrate.

Who would want a decal or label that destructed when a person tried to remove it? There are a number of industries that wanted a product that could not be removed off a product.

Manufactures that produce electronic components that need to affix a label to the rear of the component informing consumers and repair personal of the products specifications. This asset label must not be removed, because regulations imposed by governments, or inspection companies like U.L.  Underwriters Laboratories Inc. These labels are in place for consumer safety, and product compliance with basic industry standards.

Many manufacturers utilize the destructible decals or labels to keep warranties in force know as tamper evident decals or labels. If the consumer or unauthorized repairperson breaks the destructible label seal then it is evident that someone tampered with the component then the warranty of the product is void.

This product is the high tech application, of the piece of clear tape place on an entrance of a door if the tape was broken it was evident that there was an unauthorized entry. In centuries past letters of government officials were sealed with wax, impressed in the wax was the signet ring or seal of the official. If the seal was broken it was evident to the recipient of the letter the communication was compromised.   

The destructible vinyl decals and labels can be use in many different applications. Case history of the use of destructible decals was chosen because a regular decal did not suffice.

We were contacted by a company that had about a problem. The situation this company along with many other concerns were hired by FEMA for waste cleanup and disposal after a natural disasters. Each company hired was paid by the tonnage of cleanup debris collected and each company had their own containers identified with a decal affixed to the container with the company name.

The dilemma other companies would remove the decal of our client and replace it with their decal stealing their container. Therefore, when FEMA counted the tonnage collected by our client the tonnage was short, according to their records. To solve the problem we came up with the solution of utilizing a destructible decal so the competing companies could not remove the decals.

The epilogue of this story is once the destructible decals where put into service no more containers were lost.      

Decals and labels are not a captivating topic and lets be truthful the subject is a little boring. However, when you need a particular decal or label to fix a problem or a need it is important that you have a resource that can assist you in your search.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331